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That stunning Iron Man character model had me fooled.  I figured, “Hey, if they put this much love and attention into the character model, they must have taken the time to put him in a good game.”  Good one, Sega.  You got me.

Other than maybe Jon Favreau, Robert Downey Jr. and Marvel, no one wants to see the Iron Man franchise succeed as much as I do.  I’m eagerly awaiting the May 2 movie release, I’ve already bought most of the action figures, and I was anticipating spending countless hours flying around as the armored Avenger in the video game.  Well, it’s a good thing the action figures are nice, because two out of three is the best I can hope for now, because the nine minute demo fails to impress.

The demo takes place at a military installation in the desert where you are tasked with destroying a series of bunkers that contain stolen Stark weapons.  The bunkers are protected by infantry soldiers, tanks, attack helicopters and mounted turrets, and you have nine minutes to destroy all the weapons crates and kill all 100 enemies.

The first thing most people will probably do in the game is test out the flying mechanics.  The left bumper puts you in flight mode, and the left trigger allows you to hover.  Pressing the trigger halfway will make you hover in place, pressing it fully causes you to elevate while hovering.  Flying can be confusing at first due to the dual-stick controls.  The left analog stick controls your flight and the right one allows you to aim at enemies while flying.  The scheme feels a bit counterintuitive, and most players will start the game off flying out of control and into the ground.  Once you figure out the control scheme, you’ll likely stop flying into the ground repeatedly, but still find that the controls are loose and difficult to manage.

Eventually, flying around like an idiot will attract the attention of enemy soldiers, who will do everything in their power to knock you out of the sky.  To combat them, you have three main weapons; repulsor blasts, rockets and the formidable Uni-Beam.  The right trigger activates your repulsor blasts; concentrated blasts of energy originating from your gloves.  These are your main weapons, and are akin to the guns on a fighter jet.  The “Y”  button launches homing rockets at whatever target you’re locked on to.  Finally, the Uni-Beam is a chest-mounted, high-powered energy blast that’s mapped to the right bumper.

All of your weapons are extremely easy to use, due to a way-too-helpful targeting system that allows you to nail targets even if you aren’t aiming at them. It feels similar to the combat system in Mass Effect, except that in Iron Man, every dice roll is a critical hit.  While the targeting system may be accurate for Iron Man, showing how advanced his armor’s technology is, it makes the demo way too easy, even on the hardest setting.   

Regardless of how much damage you do in the air, you will need to spend some time on the ground as well.  On foot, the controls are very similar, with the left stick for movement and the right for aiming.  Whether in the air or on the ground, the “A” button will give you a short-range burst of speed, useful for evading attacks.  There’s also an energy shield mapped to the “X” button, but it’s only available if you choose it during the pre-game customization screen, and, honestly, it doesn’t seem to do much good anyway.  Your various ranged attacks are complemented by a melee attack and a grapple.  The grapple is useful, as it allows you to tear tanks apart, uproot turrets, disable helicopters, and even catch missies mid-flight to be used against opponents.  The melee attack is far less impressive, and basically lets you punch enemies with a poorly animated series of superhero-y punches.

As mentioned before, the Iron Man model, taken directly from the ILM model used in the movie, looks fantastic.  Light shimmers and reflects off his armor just the way it should, and structural damage to the suit is rendered beautifully in real time.  He looks much better in the air than on foot, with some of his ground animations suffering from serious clipping issues.  The rest of the level doesn’t look anywhere near as good as Iron Man, and could be classified as visually mediocre.  Likewise, the sound effects that come from Iron Man (weapons, thrusters, etc.) are crisp and believable, but the voice work, done by the film’s actors, is poorly written, poorly voiced and even seems to have been poorly recorded.

Disappointing?  Most definitely.  That’s not to say that there’s nothing worthwhile here.  There’s a cool system that allows you to route power to your thrusters, weapons, melee or life-support on-the-fly, a customization feature that we barely get a peek at, and there are even times during combat where the game shows some promise.  Add in the extensive lineup of classic Iron Man armors and villains, and you can be sure that I’ll be playing this one the day it comes out.  That being said, I can’t imagine the game garnering more than 6’s and 7’s when the reviews start pouring in.  I hope that the game has more to offer than what we’ve seen, but I think we’re probably looking at another mediocre movie tie-in.



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